At The Heart Of The Twelve Years’ Truce Controversies: Conrad Vorstius, Gerard Vossius And Hugo Grotius

10.1163/ej.9789004185739.i-540.91

Brill’s MyBook program is exclusively available on
BrillOnline Books and Journals. Students and scholars affiliated with an
institution that has purchased a Brill E-Book on the BrillOnline platform
automatically have access to the MyBook option for the title(s) acquired by the
Library. Brill MyBook is a print-on-demand paperback copy which is sold at a
favorably uniform low price.

Chapter Summary

The period of the Twelve Years Truce between the Southern and the Northern Netherlands (16091621) was one of the most turbulent episodes of seventeenth-century Dutch history. At the heart of the truce controversies that made the period of the Truce so turbulent were three scholars who tried to preserve the peace in church and country by a scholarly approach to the problems of that period: the Leiden professor Conrad Vorstius from Steinfurt; the rector of the Latin School of Dordrecht, Gerardus Joannes Vossius; and the famous scholar and diplomat Hugo Grotius. This chapter presents the history of these scholars in seven snapshots. Vossius, Vorstius and Grotius tried to point out a safe middle passage to those setting the churchs course, but their signals were not received or were taken amiss. Vossius and Grotius painfully had to rebuild a worthwhile future, a future that Vorstius did not even live to see.